Use of a conventional surgical procedure to provide a diagnosis and/or prognosis on a patient is necessarily invasive. Where a surgical probe is used to reduce the invasiveness, the procedure is often performed blindly or with indirect image guidance, with little accurate information on the location of the probe and/or whether the probe has located, navigated to or reached the target site. One result of a conventional approach is an increased number of false positive test results and false negative test results that directly affect the diagnostic results and the results of subsequent surgery at the target site. For example, about 37 percent of patients undergoing epidural anesthesia require three or more attempts at epidural placement. In another direction, about 20 percent of instances of prostate cancer are missed (false negative test result) by performance of a blind biopsy.
What is needed is a system and associated method that allows navigation to a target site and uses results from several different tests to identify a malignancy, a disease, a benign condition, a normal condition or any other medical condition (collectively referred to as “medical conditions” herein) at the target site from a reduced group of such conditions that may be present, consistent with the data obtained from various measurements and other information. Preferably, the system should work with quantitative measurements, with qualitative measurements and with other relevant information on the subject and the subject's family. Preferably, the system should allow inclusion or exclusion of one or more selected measurements and information items without reconfiguration of the analysis of the data presented and should allow assignment of selected weights to different data items, corresponding to the importance of a data item in identifying presence of a particular medical condition.